Archive for the 'Social Media' Category

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21 Twitter Tips From Socially Savvy Companies

Published on April 24, 2010 in Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Adapted from his book Engage, Brian Solis presents his list of suggestions to help businesses learn how to engage customers on Twitter through the examples of those companies, from Dell to Zappos, already successfully building online communities. You can find the complete article here. A summary of the top 10 tips are listed below:

1 ) Special Offers
2 ) Ordering
3 ) Word of Mouth Marketing
4 ) Conversation Marketing
5 ) Customer Service
6 ) Focus Groups
7 ) Direct Sales
8 ) Business Development
9 ) Curation
10) Information Networks

Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2010

Published on April 20, 2010 in High Tech & Media and Social Media. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Software upstarts such as Playdom, Posterous, and Foursquare capitalize on Web users’ desire to make social networks more useful and fun.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s have surveyed the tech sector to identify a fresh crop of the most promising technology startups and the young people, age 30 and under, who are steering them. Seven of the 13 startups on this year’s list are building Web and mobile-device software that extend the capabilities of social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.

It’s not surprising that many startups want to ride the coattails of popular social networks. The rapid ascent of traffic to social networking sites can draw lots of attention for startups that offer new tools or diversions to their members. “Facebook and Twitter have become platforms in the same way Microsoft’s Windows became a platform 20 years ago. The complete special report can be found here.

Silicon Valley Gears Up for M&A

Published on April 4, 2010 in High Tech & Media and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Silicon Valley companies looking to put their cash to work may drive a wave of mergers this year, bankers and venture capitalists say.

Companies are eager to make acquisitions because many of them have cut research budgets. Meaning many of them are not as able to fall back on their own ingenuity to fuel growth. More businesses are relying on acquisitions to find their next new product or service [Source].

Venture capitalists had their busiest quarter (2010Q1) in recent memory, with nine venture-backed companies going public and a record-breaking 111 companies changing hands in mergers and acquisitions according to a report released Thursday by Thomson Reuters and the National Venture Capital Association (Source: Charts). Out of the 111 M&A deals, 81 took place in the information technology sector.

Facebook More Popular Than Google?

Published on March 18, 2010 in Social Media. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

According to the latest Hitwise analysis, Google’s lost its crown as the most-visited Web site in the U.S. last week. The new king of Web site traffic is, of course, Facebook.

During the Winter holidays there were a few momentary spikes in traffic which placed Facebook on the top, but if you check out the graph of the long term trend shown above, you can see Facebook’s meteoric rise is now on target to meet or beat Google. And if that curve continues on its trajectory, which it may well do for a while (its market share is 185% up over the same week in 2009, for example,) Facebook will become number one by a huge margin, versus the tiddly little 0.04% separation it currently has above Google’s 7.03% share of average weekly market share.

Nonetheless, Facebook is now in a position to leverage those user visits to seize control of the online ad-placement business from Google–advertisers will begin to do the math and work out which site will get their ads in front of more eyeballs. And while Web 2.0 has been with us for a while, the fact that more people are visiting Facebook than Google indicates that this interactive revolution has really changed online habits [Source].

News Browsing by Network Analysis

Published on February 28, 2010 in Real-Time Web and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Intuitively, we all know that big news topics relate to other big news topics–when you read about Google, you’re likely also reading about Microsoft. This new tool from Slate makes those connections a bit more concrete.

News Dots automatically scans all of the articles from major publications, and then tags them using Calais, an automated tagging engine created by Thompson Reuters. When two stories share a tag, it records the results:

The hope, of course, is that as the tool develops, “social networks” will develop in clusters, the same way that Facebook friends tend to cluster around college acquaintance.

The interface is currently hideous. But you wonder if something like this isn’t the future of news browsing. Can you imagine what happens when tagging technology gets truly semantic–when stories can be linked not just with keywords, but ideas? [Source: Flowing Data]

Google vs Facebook

Published on February 12, 2010 in Global Strategy and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

For years Google has stayed on the fringes of the social-networking industry, leaving the field largely to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Now, however, it is making a determined foray into online friendships. On February 9th the search giant unveiled Buzz, a networking service that will be closely integrated with the firm’s e-mail offering, Gmail. Google no doubt hopes Buzz will help it catch up with the leaders of the networking world—but the chances are slim. Mashable made a comparison here. [Source 1] [Source 2].

Flickr Is Now 6 Years Old

Published on February 11, 2010 in Ranting and Raving and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: .

Popular photo-sharing social network Flickr was launched back in February 2004 by a Vancouver-based company Ludicorp. It took one year for Yahoo to acquire Flickr, and among the company’s many acquisitions, Flickr definitely stands as one of the most successful.

Being six years old (nearly the same age as Facebook) makes Flickr almost an old guy on the Internet, as many other social networks (Bebo, hi5) have risen and fallen within that timespan. Although its traffic lately isn’t growing as it used to, it’s still doing well, with users sharing billions of photos there. We wish you a very happy birthday, Flickr!

The Peoples’ Republic of Google

Published on February 1, 2010 in International Business and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , .

By standing up to authoritarianism in China, The People’s Republic of Google will set an example for individuals and businesses around the world. If resistance goes viral, the implications for China could be revolutionary.

On Jan. 12, Google announced it will stop censoring search results on its Chinese site, Google.cn, in response to what the company calls “highly sophisticated” hacking of its Web site from China and the infiltration of Gmail accounts of human-rights activists in China and other countries.

The top search engine in China is Baidu, a homegrown product. Let Google leave. It’s Google’s loss. Right? Well, the People’s Republic of Google may have more leverage in this battle than one might think, though. It’s really confronting China as a nongovernmental organization. And this is a time when nongovernmental entities, from moveon.org to the tea parties and al-Qaeda, exert real political power. Read more here.

A Global Melting Pot of Ideas

Published on January 23, 2010 in High Tech & Media, International Business and Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Follow live coverage of the DLD in Munich, Germany, a gathering of 800 entrepreneurs, investors, philanthropists, scientists, artists and creative minds from around the world.

With global diversity in attendees and an interdisciplinary perspective of digital, media, design, art, science, brands, consumers and society, the conference is known as the European forum for the “creative class”. Follow live coverage here.

10 Web Trends For 2010

Published on December 7, 2009 in Social Media. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

web-trends-2010As the year draws to a close, what does 2010 hold for social media and the web? While web innovation is unpredictable, some clear trends are emerging.

Among the good bets for 2010 online: Real-time, Content Curation, Cloud Computing, Convergence Continues (eBooks are the exception), Social Gaming and more.

This week’s CNN column looks at 10 of the big themes that will shape the next year on the web.